Saturday, October 30, 2004

Do people really live out their lives acting out a series of cliches, or is it just that way in the movies? I saw RAY yesterday, and it was a lot like a Douglas Sirk melodrama from the 1950s with a little more frankness about drugs and sex (but not much more; it's rated PG-13, after all). For that matter, it's a lot like one of those '50s rock 'n' roll movies of the GO, JOHNNY, GO era, especially in the way it presents the off-the-cuff creation of classics like "What'd I Say?" and "Hit the Road, Jack." Even though the movie's very long (and sometimes seems even longer), it doesn't really deal with the complexity of Ray Charles' character (it all goes back to childhood trauma!), and some of the supporting cast members are reduced to simple stereotypes. Sure, Jamie Foxx does a terrific job of presenting himself as Charles (except for a dream sequence at the end, when the glasses come off and show us Foxx himself, a jarring note). And of course the music is wonderful, worth the price of admission all by itself, but I left the theater feeling pretty unsatisfied. As we know, however, I'm a grumpy old man, and some of the audience liked the movie a lot more than I did. One elderly black woman pushing a walker told the woman beside her that she loved it and that she was "ready to see it again right now!"

If you want to hear the song and see the monsters dance, this link is the place to go.

And if you want a great page full of Halloween-related links, check out Incoming Signals. Everything from rogue taxidermists to the "Mickey Mouse contemplates suicide" daily comic strip from October 1930.

Friday, October 29, 2004

On Wednesday I did my civic duty and voted. And believe me, after just a few minutes in the Alvin early voting room, I'm convinced that democracy is not only messy but that we're in serious trouble. The place looked like the wrap party for the combined casts of Dumb and Dumber and Deliverance.

One woman with a nearly shaved head tried to vote in the college board election and came out of the booth saying that she'd done it all wrong and that her tranquilizers were to blame. The election officials voided her ballot and asked if she wanted to vote again, but she was zoned out and just wandered over to the national election side and got in line there.

And that side of the room was an interesting zoo all by itself. One guy in front of me was about 90 years old and using a walker. He had a voter registration certificate that was at least five years out of date. I don't know how they ever settled that one. The discussion was still going on when I left. The zoned-out woman was in the booth next to me, and one of the election officials was with her. I didn't try to listen in, but the official was talking the whole time. I wonder just who was voting. All in all, it was a depressing experience.

My favorite band of the '70s was Creedence Clearwater Revival. I could give you a list of their songs that I like, but it would take too long. When Creedence broke up, I continued to keep up with John Fogerty, whose voice and arrangements gave the group most of its distinctive sound. His new CD is DEJA VIEW ALL OVER AGAIN, and the title song is an anti-Iraq war tune, comparing Iraq to Viet Nam in Fogerty's usual understated way. But the title might also have another meaning, as most of the songs on the CD already sound familiar, as if you might have heard them on some other John Fogerty production. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I like Fogerty's music, and I'm always happy to listen to whatever he comes up with. "I Will Walk with You" is a nice country-flavored love song, and "Honey Do" is a humorous number that's going to remind a lot of guys of something they hear all the time. My grandmother used to cook rhubarb, and I haven't had any in probably 50 years, so I got a little nostalgic listening to "Rhubarb Pie." "She's Got Baggage" is probably the hardest rocker on the CD. Good stuff, too. In fact, all the songs are good, if familiar. Great listening.

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Judy and I are baseball fans. We watch the Houston Astros on TV or listen to them on radio just about every evening during the summer, and we enjoyed their run toward the play-offs this year. While we were sorry to see them miss out on the World Series (and they certainly had their chances in the play-off games with the Cardinals), we at least had the fun of seeing them get past the first play-off round for the first time in their history.

I've always been a National League kind of a guy, and ordinarily I'd have been rooting for the Cards in the World Series. But not this time. Here's why not: I'm a big fan of the Kingston Trio (see my homepage for more on that topic). On October 17th, the Kingston Trio sang "The Star Spangled Banner" before the play-off game between the Red Sox and the New York Yankers. At that point, thanks to the magic of the KT, the Curse of the Bambino was lifted, and the Red Sox went on their unprecedented winning streak of eight games in a row, thereby becoming (as far as I know) the first team ever to win a World Series on the night of a total eclipse of the moon.

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Blogger has been trying its best to keep me from posting today, but it appears to be cooperating again. For now, at least. So here goes.

Recently I've been reading James Lee Burke's Last Car to Elysian Fields. I've been a big fan of Burke's writing since I read a paperback copy of Lay Down My Sword and Shield around 30 years ago. But lately I find myself thinking that that he's overdoing the description bit. He does it so well that I don't really blame him, however. And there's another thing that bothers me. In reading Last Car and Bitterroot, I thought that there was a lot of sound and fury but not much of real consequence. Plenty of violent action, but not much else. And everybody in the book is screwed up beyond belief. Isn't anybody in Louisana anywhere near normal? While I'm carping, I'll also add that Last Car relies too heavily on the old deus ex machina or even what the Disney guys call "fairy dust" to help wrap things up. Or maybe I'm just a grumpy old man.

Blogger has been trying its best to keep me from posting today, but it appears to be cooperating again. For now, at least. So here goes.

Recently I've been reading James Lee Burke's Last Car to Elysian Fields. I've been a big fan of Burke's writing since I read a paperback copy of Lay Down My Sword and Shield around 30 years ago. But lately I find myself thinking that that he's overdoing the description bit. He does it so well that I don't really blame him, however. And there's another thing that bothers me. In reading Last Car and Bitterroot, I thought that there was a lot of sound and fury but not much of real consequence. Plenty of violent action, but not much else. And everybody in the book is screwed up beyond belief. Isn't anybody in Louisana anywhere near normal? While I'm carping, I'll also add that Last Car relies too heavily on the old deus ex machina or even what the Disney guys call "fairy dust" to help wrap things up. Or maybe I'm just a grumpy old man.

'Paul will be with us at least through Dec. 15,' Charles said. 'We've been proud to be partners with him. You don't get to work with that many legends in this business.

'But there is not a musical fit with him (among Clear Channel's Houston stations), and that is one of the hardest parts about this decision.'"

So Clear Channel is taking the only music station I listen to and going to all sports-talk, all the time. There's already a sports station, but what the heck. Now no one will be playing music from the 1940s and 1950s. I'm really angry about this, but of course there's not a thing I can do. Being an old geezer, I'm not anybody's target audience anymore, except for the people who run Goodlife TV. And the commercials on that channel are too depressing to watch.

Because I was an adolescent in the late 1950s, Bobby Darin was a guy I sort of grew up with. Not that I ever met him. I watched him on American Bandstand when “Splish Splash” came out, and I remember that he and Buddy Holly both had hits with “Early in the Morning” (Darin was singing under the name of the “Rinky Dinks” for that one, but everybody knew it was him). I remember when “Mack the Knife”hit the air, and I realized that Darin could be Frank Sinatra if he wanted to, and I remember his folk phase with “If I Were a Carpenter” and “Long Line Rider.” Then he had a TV series. And then he was dead.

I knew all that, but I didn’t know much else. When I read that Kevin Spacey was making a movie based on Darin’s life, I was interested, and when I saw a copy of Dream Lovers by Dodd Darin, Bobby’s son, at Half Price Books for a couple of books I picked it up. It’s a fascinating
story.

I’d heard that Darin was “brash,” but he was more than that. He was a terribly obnoxious egotist, but he was also a guy who had many loyal friends. And he was smooth with the chicks. Possibly my favorite story in the book involves is relationship with Connie Francis. I didn’t know he even had a relationship with her, but apparently two of them were very much in love, or Darin was as much in love with her as he could be with anybody. Here’s the story: “While he was seeing Connie, [Bobby] was having sexual relations with other women. Bobby told her that he had to have sex to keep his skin clear, and Connie not only believed him but has said that she was not threatened by these other girls.” Now that’s a convincing guy. Either that or Connie was remarkably naive.

While I knew about Darin’s career, I didn’t know much about Sandra Dee. I’d seen her in the movies (Gidget!), and I knew that she and Darin had married, but that was about all. She just dropped out of sight during the late 1960s and never showed up on my radar again. Little did I know what a mess her life has been. I guess that cutie-pie screen image fooled me. You’d think I’d know better. The book was published in 1994, and at that time she was still in the grip of alcoholism and anorexia. I don’t know how she’s doing now, but I’d like to think that she was recovering. She’s three years younger than I am, which is a scary thought for me. I don’t know exactly why, though.

Dream Lovers is a pretty melancholy book, all in all. I’m sure that writing it was therapy for Dodd Darin, and it’s not a happy story. Bobby Darin went became a big star, and then he went from the penthouse to the outhouse before staging a hugely successful comeback. But he died before the comeback was complete, apparently through his own carelessness, or something. He’d had a heart condition since a childhood bout with rheumatic fever, and he was having serious problems . So there’s no real explanation for this: “He went to the dentist to have his teeth cleaned. Heart patients are supposed to take antibiotics when having dental work done, as a preventive against bacteria invading the bloodstream. . . . For reasons known only to [Darin], he didn’t take the antibiotics.” And septicemia killed him not long afterward.

For a guy who’s Bobby Darin’s son, Dodd Darin at times has a shaky grasp of music history. He says at one point, “The Stones followed the Beatles, then came the Beach Boys . . . .” Having been around during those days, I know full well that the Beach Boys were selling hit records years before Beatles came along. Don’t let a little thing like that bother you if you’d like to know more about Bobby Darin, though. It’s a fascinating, if depressing, story.

Sunday, October 24, 2004

Among the DVDs I picked up at The Dollar Tree was one with eight episodes of the Fleischer Superman cartoons from the 1940s. I watched four of them today, and they were all great. This is one DVD that's definitely worth a buck. Obviously the guy who did SKY CAPTAIN has seen these. My favorites of the four I watched were "Japoteurs" and "The Underground World," but "The Mummy Strikes" was also a lot of fun. It's not the stories that makes these cartoons worth watching. Those are pretty lame. But the artwork, the animation, the fluidity of the movement, the images, the color -- zowie! The disc I got is Volume 2. Now I have to find Volume 1. And Volume 3 if there is one.

Ed's Place: "Pop Dreams from the Collective Gutter by Jack O'Connell"
I'm sure all of you check in at Ed's Place daily, but if you missed this post by Jack O'Connell, hop over there and check it out. You might have to scroll down, but don't miss it.